1. Comparative Approaches:
Clash of Civilisation Vs. Humanism
(Multiculturalism)

2. Clash of civilisations theory seem to mark the political relationships between the West and Islam
The myth of a Europe founded on Judaeo-Christian values has been reinforced by marking the differences between Islam and the West rather than trying to undermine them.

3. ‘Europe and north America’ as a socio-political entity feels the need to mark such imagined boundaries between the Islamic culture and what Huntington calls ‘the Western civilisation’

4. Europe asks its Muslims to become Muslims of Europe, in other words Muslims that re-elaborate their cultural and religious meanings to become citizen of a new Europe, which include also Islam.
But, at the same time, Europe acts in such a way that Muslims can only remain Muslims in Europe; in other words, aliens in a Christocentric European environ-ment.

5. Huntington argued (1996:28), “…the most pervasive, important and dangerous conflicts will not be between social classes, rich and poor, or other economically defined groups, but between people belonging to different cultural entities. Tribal wars and ethnic conflicts will occur within civilizations…And the most dangerous cultural conflicts are those along the fault lines between civilizations… For forty-five years the Iron Curtain was the central dividing line in Europe. That line has moved several hundred miles east. It is now the line separating peoples of Western Christianity, on the one hand, from Muslim and Orthodox peoples on the other.”

6. Challenging ‘Clash’ Thesis
Challenging the existence of a single Islamic culture stretching all the way from Jakarta to Lagos,
let alone one that held values deeply incompatible with democracy
the publics in Western and Islamic societies share similar or deeply divergent values
any important differences between these cultures rest on democratic values (as
Huntington claims) or on social values (as modernization theories suggest).

7. The ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis advances three central claims
First- culture does matter, and matter a lot: religious legacies leave a distinct and lasting Imprint on contemporary values; religion is the central defining element of culture.

8. Second-, the ‘clash’ thesis claims that there are sharp cultural differences between the core political values common in societies sharing a Western Christian heritage -- particularly those concerning representative democracy -- and the beliefs common in the rest of the world, especially Islamic societies.

9. Third, Huntington argues that important and long-standing differences in political values based on predominant religious cultures will lead to conflict between and within nation-states, with the most central problems of global politics arising from an ethno-religious ‘clash’.

10. Contesting ‘clash’ thesis
challenging the notion of a single Islamic culture, pointing to substantial contrasts found among one billion people living in diverse Islamic nations, such as Pakistan, Jordan, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Turkey, and the differences between Muslims who are radical or moderate, traditional or modern, conservative or liberal, hard-line or revisionist

11. Along similar lines, the idea that we can recognize a single culture of ‘Western Christianity’ is to over-simplify major cross-national differences, even among affluent post-industrial societies as superficially similar as the United States, Italy, and Sweden, for example the contrasts between Catholic Mediterranean Europe and Protestant Scandinavia, as well as among social sectors and religious denominations within each country.

12. the core values and teaching of the Koran are not incompatible with those of democracy

13. Setting the Scene
The Islamic world and the West appear to be mired in an intensifying cycle of political and cultural conflict:
The profoundly unsettled nature of Western relations with the Muslim Middle East. In matters related to Persian Gulf geopolitics, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the politics of Islamic revivalism, American policy preferences for maintaining stability and control through a system of regional alliances are met with contrary regional preferences for dramatic change.
Frictions generated by conflicting interests and desires spill over into the cultural domain, resulting in the politicization of identities and beliefs and mores of the “other” are regarded as threatening and problematic.
The result is an atmosphere of doubt, distrust, and disrespect in which efforts to dominate and coerce adversaries displace initiatives to collaborate in a search for intercultural understanding and means of mutual political accommodation. On both sides of the troubled relationship between Americans and the Muslim Middle East, there is deep estrangement and a growing belief in the futility of communication.